How you became the web
“Time” magazine’s “Man of the Year” for 1982 was not a man at all but a machine – the computer. In those days, computers were in very few homes, hardly anyone had heard of the Internet, and the World Wide Web did not exist.
In 1999, “Time” magazine’s “Person of the Year” (notice the gender change) was Jeff Bezos, the founder of the e-commerce web site Amazon. By then, PCs were ubiquitous and the web commonplace but dominated by major commercial interests.
In 2006, “Time” made its “Person of the Year” choice as “You. Yes, you. You control the Information Age.” For this edition of the magazine, seven million pieces of reflective Mylar were ordered for sticking on the front cover, so that you saw yourself on the page.
So, what was all this about? Why did the magazine then devote no less than 27 pages to examining how you and me are now shaping the Net?
This is the start of my latest monthly Internet column which I’ve titled “How you became the web”